Georgia Anne MuldrowIt’s ba-ack. Did you miss it? Lilith Fair ran for three years as a blow-out “celebration of women in music” touring festival, anchored by Canadian songstress Sarah McLachlan. From 1997 to 1999, the featured women ranged from lady folk staples like The Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow and Jewel to Queen Latifah and, a bit strangely, Christina Aguilera. Early this year, rumblings of a revival were confirmed, and a couple of days ago, the Lilith Fair website rolled out a list of eighteen cities that the tour will hit in 2010, including our fair town, as well as Portland and Vancouver, B.C. So more than ten years after Lilith Fair swept through the country, what will their as-of-yet-unreleased lineup project about the state of women in music today? While the Lilith Fair of a decade ago was a feel-good– and overarchingly white– display of acoustic adult alternative with a feminist veneer, I can see a Lilith Fair transformed into a platform for innovative, relevant women across genres that would truly match the times and would be just as lucrative for festival producers. Can we get a Santigold or a M.I.A.? Janelle Monae? Yeah Yeah Yeah’s frontwoman Karen O, or soul singer Georgia Anne Muldrow (pictured above)? I guess I’m anticipating that the new Lilith Fair may dip easily into the more middling and conventional– such as the dew-faced, boring-as-all-hell Colbie Caillat– when truly “celebrating women” would include more daring artists who have proven their resilience in the pop music market and deserve a world-class showcase. At the very least, my plea to Lilith Fair: if you’re going to stick to the formula of solo white crooning female acts, could you bring Fiona Apple back to us? Thanks.